Monday, July 06, 2015

I find myself firmly ensconsed in Rockford for the holiday weekend & the next few days after a busy week attending to all the things, including making some new zines for the rather lonely zine exchange and launching our new music feature on the Aesthetics blog. In press news, we've closed submissions for the mermaid anthology, which I will be making my way through in the coming weeks, but are still open for a two more months in our regular reading period for chapbooks we'll be publishing in 2016. Otherwise, there are orders to get out, new layouts, some books waiting for finalized proofs. We've hit the point where I usually fall a bit behind in the schedule, but I should remedy it by the end of the month with a bunch of new releases.

The holiday was filled with the usual picnic festivities, which increasingly are a little bit Cinco de Mayo, a little bit 4th of July (pinatas, tequila drinks, fried chicken, potato salad). This morning is rainy and humid and it's harder than usual to sleep here. I miss my comfy bed, my lake breezes and giant windows. There's been a little bit unsanctioned wildlife in the form of a tiny snake that must have hitched a ride either in the open pocket of my luggage while it was sitting outside for a bit the night I got here, or in the depths of the vintage sleeping bag I acquired for next weekends camping trip. I'm not actually afraid of snakes, but this one creeping over my suitcase was a bit of a surprise and despite my rural roots, I've never actually dealt with one in person (they're sort of rare this high away from the river.). I shut him up in the suitcase swiftly and he escaped out in the yard, but not before all my dresses were comicly strewn across the lawn trying to find him.

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A writer and book artist working in both text and image, Kristy Bowen is the author of a number of chapbook, zine, and artists book projects, as well as six full-length collections of poetry/prose/hybrid work, including the recent SALVAGE (Black Lawrence Press, 2016) and MAJOR CHARACTERS IN MINOR FILMS (Sundress Publications, 2015). She lives in Chicago, where she runs dancing girl press & studio and spends much of her time writing, making papery things, and editing a chapbook series devoted to women authors. She currently works in the library of an arts college, where she oversees the reserve collection and co-curates The Aesthetics of Research, a project devoted to the intersection of libraries and the arts. Her seventh book, LITTLE APOCALYPSE, is due out from Noctuary Press in 2018.
www.kristybowen.net